The Package
by Lucas23
Summary: NCIS special agents are getting sick and dying. What's poisoning them? Can they stop it? And what's with McGee's iPhone? Language and possible major character death.
1. Arrival

The Package

Arrival

"Ohhhh, it's finally here," McGee said excitedly as he opened the package that had just been handed to him by the mail carrier. He grabbed the knife in his pocket and cut the tape to open the box. After a couple seconds of digging through packing peanuts, he found what he was looking for.

"What is it?" Tony asked curiously. He stood up from his desk and walked over to where McGee sat.

"It's my new iPhone. I ordered it off Amazon," McGee explained.

"Well why did you ship it here?" Tony asked.

"I don't like to put my address on the internet," McGee said.

"What don't you like to put on the internet?" Ziva asked as she walked into the bullpen; throwing her coat in her chair and walking over to Tony and McGee.

"My address," McGee said again, "I ordered it off Amazon and had it shipped here, because I don't like to put my address out on the internet."

"I thought that Amazon was a secure network," Ziva pointed out. McGee sighed.

"I've hacked into the FBI, IBM, and even The White House's security. I think that someone would be able to get into Amazon's records," McGee stated. Ziva ran a smile across her face then turned on her heels and went back to her desk. Tony did the same and they began to due paperwork.

"Tony," McGee said.

"Yeah Probie?" Tony asked as he turned to look at McGee. Just as he looked at McGee, McGee snapped a photo of Tony.

"What was that for?" Tony asked.

"I need a picture of you for your contact info," McGee said, "your turn Ziva," she turned her head and put on a nice smile.

"You can do that later McGee," Gibbs said as he walked to his desk; coffee in hand, "we got a dead body on a marine base." They all grabbed their weapons and badges and headed to the elevator and out to the car.

"Whatcha got for me?" Gibbs asked Ducky.

"Female victim, no face, hands, or feet," Ducky said.

"Okay so I understand the face and hands, but why the feet?" Gibbs asked.

"It seems that our killer had been with his victim for a while," Ducky began, "the scabs from where her feet were cut off at are at least a couple weeks old, probably to keep the poor girl from escaping," Ducky suggested.

"Smile," McGee said coming up from behind Gibbs and Ducky. They both turned and McGee snapped the photo. He then turned and got one of Palmer. He was surprised to see Director Vance as he turned around.

"Director Vance, why are you here?" McGee asked. He brought up his phone and snapped a picture. Vance was temporarily blinded and blinked his eyes for a couple seconds, "sorry… the flash… sorry."

"I was in the neighborhood and heard about this. Where's Gibbs?" Vance demanded. McGee pointed down the hill to where Gibbs was. Vance carefully walked down the hill and came up behind Gibbs.

"This better not be what I think it is," Vance said.

"I'm afraid it is," Ducky said.

"Is what?" Gibbs asked.

"Two years ago fifteen women were killed with the same M.O. The killer was never caught or even identified," Vance explained.

"Well that's going to have to change," Gibbs stated.


	2. Man Down

Man Down

"Smile Abby," McGee said as he waltzed into Abby's lab. Abby immediately ran behind her desk and ducked down.

"McGee you know I don't like my picture taken," Abby announced.

"I know the URL's of at least three different websites that would prove otherwise," McGee remarked.

"That was then, this is now. Now put the camera away or I will be forced to sick Gibbs upon you," Abby said.

"Fine, I'm putting it away, see," McGee said as he put the phone in his pocket and his hands above his head. Abby looked up and gazed at him with his eyes, watching his every move.

"Okay," Abby said, "how come Tony didn't come up with you?"

"He got sick at the crime scene and Gibbs sent him home," McGee explained.

"Awww, poor Tony," Abby said sadly, "why did he get sick?"

"He says he doesn't know. He's just going to wait it out and be back to work tomorrow," McGee said.

"Oh, well then where are Ziva and Gibbs?" Abby further inquired.

"Now that you mention it, they said they were going to be coming right up behind me. I figured they would be here by now," McGee said looking behind him.

"I just called both their cells and neither of them answered," Abby said.

"I'll go down and see what's taking them so long," McGee said. He left Abby's lab and headed to the elevator. As he pressed the down button the elevator stopped at his floor. There stood Ziva and Gibbs as the elevator door began to part from each other.

"Where were you guys?" McGee asked.

"We got caught up talking to the director. Apparently there is a terrorist here and she wants us to find him," Ziva answered.

"Okay, but that will have to wait, because Abby has something for us," McGee said. He turned around and led them back into Abby's lab, "I found them Abby."

"Oh good," Abby said as she embraced Gibbs in a hug. She grabbed his hand and pulled him to her desk, "I got a match on the DNA. Our Jane Doe is actually Svetlana Gregorski. She is a Russian immigrant, here in 2009. She lives at 9453 Charles St. She has no next of kin and get this; she worked for the KGB."

"The terrorist that is here had ties to the KGB," Gibbs said, "Ziva, I want you to contact your friends at Interpol and see what they know." He waited for a response, but there wasn't one. He turned around, but didn't see her. He looked down at the floor and there she was; lying on the ground with blood coming out of her mouth. Gibbs instantly kneeled down to her side. He checked her pulse and she was still alive.

"McGee call an ambulance!" Gibbs ordered, "stay with us Ziva, stay… with…" Gibbs fell over next to her.


	3. iPhone

iPhone

"What's the matter with them?" McGee asked the doctor.

"We're not sure for certain at this time, but we believe it to be radiation poisoning," the doctor replied, "have they been exposed to any radiation or hazardous material lately?"

"No, not since, last year when we investigated the death of the dead man walking," McGee said, "should I be checked out?"

"What I suggest you do is get a Geiger counter and check yourself for radiation. Then check all of your equipment back at your office, run through your cases, try and find where they were exposed," the doctor recommended.

"Okay," McGee said. as he walked down the hallway he saw another man being carried in on a stretcher. He instantly recognized him as Ducky. He rushed over to Ducky's stretcher.

"Ducky, Ducky, are you okay?" McGee asked.

"He can't hear you sir, he's been sedated," the nurse explained. They wheeled him into a room leaving McGee by himself. He got to his car and headed back to NCIS headquarters. Upon his arrival, reporters rushed to him and began asking him questions.

"What's happening to NCIS Special Agents?" one asked.

"What's causing their sickness?" another asked.

"What about the Russian terrorist? Is he somehow connected to this?" the last one said. He didn't answer any of them; didn't even look at them. He walked into the building and immediately went to Abby's lab.

"Did you get anything yet?" McGee asked. He starred at Abby who was dressed in a full blown hazmat suit.

"Not yet, I've already checked all the other employees in the building and all the equipment here in the building that they might have come into contact with; the printer, telephones, computers, etcetera," Abby replied. She grabbed a Geiger counter and walked up to McGee. He spread his legs and held out his arms. Abby ran the meter over McGee's entire body without a single beep.

"You're clean," Abby said, "now go to the computer and start looking for our terrorist."

"You think that he has something to do with this?" Abby said.

"Well it seems pretty convenient. He shows up and then six NCIS employees get sick," Abby stated.

"Wait six? I only saw four at the hospital," McGee said.

"Palmer and Director Vance were just admitted a couple minutes ago," Abby explained.

"Well, how could they all be sick?" McGee said. He put his hand on his head and began to think harder then he ever had. His feet began to travel over the floor as he paced back and forth.

"Okay, what we need to do is sit down and start a plan," Abby suggested. She cleared off a table and got a chair for McGee.

"Now let's think," McGee said, "what about that case with the weird house and the triple homicide?"

"No that was too long ago. With the amount of radiation that the doctor said they had they had to have been exposed in the last couple of days even up to early this morning," Abby concluded.

"What about the case this morning. She had links to the terrorist and would explain why everyone was sick," McGee shouted happily.

"But you're not and you were there the longest," Abby said.

"Maybe it was the body that gave off the radiation, I never went near it I was out taking pictures for Gibbs," McGee said.

"Yeah but according to the report neither did Director Vance," Abby said.

"No I think I got a picture of him standing over the body," McGee said. He pulled out his iPhone and started to look through his pictures. He saw Tony in the bullpen, followed by Ziva behind her desk, Gibbs and Ducky at the crime scene, Palmer covering his face, and Director Vance with that dazed look in his face. Then he realized what was happening. He was causing them all to get sick.


	4. Small Silver Box

Small Silver Box

"Abby, scan my phone with the Geiger counter," McGee said. She got off her chair and grabbed the counter. She switched it on and ran it over McGee's phone. Nothing.

"Is there anything that can protect from radiation?" McGee asked Abby.

"Well iron can. It's used to contain radioactive waste to be put in storage but it has to be like three feet thick," Abby said. McGee knew that he was on to something and needed to further investigate.

He grabbed a very small tool and wedged it into the space between the glass and the outer casing on his iPhone. It took him a minute or so but eventually he was able to get the glass separated from the casing. He slowly took it apart piece by piece. He pulled up a YouTube video of taking apart an iPhone and carefully checked for differences. It wasn't the most scientific way to go about this, but time was one thing they did not have.

After checking everything, he noticed that there was a small silver box that had was attached to the camera on his iPhone, but not the one being disassembled on YouTube. That could either mean one of two things. Either this small silver box was an addition to the newest generation of iPhone or that this is what he was looking for.

"Abby I think that we should put on biohazard suits just in case," McGee stated.

"Okay, I'll go get them," she replied. She walked into the second part of her lab then into the third part and grabbed two of many biohazard suits that were stored there. She thought back to the last time when she had used these; when that crazy woman who headed that research company poisoned Kate and Tony. A tear welled up in her eye when she thought about Kate. She thought that she was over her since it had been like four years, but Abby was never one to forget about someone.

She walked back into the first part of her lab with the biohazard suits. She wiped away the tear while she had her back turned to McGee so that he wouldn't see her crying. Once in the biohazard suits, Abby sealed the door with biohazard tape and locked it. She also turned on the warning light so that people wouldn't try to come in while McGee grabbed the Plexiglas case so that they could open the small silver box.

Once the box was inside the other box Abby inserted her hands into the gloves and began to carefully open the silver box. She had found a seem where the box had obviously been sealed, but was having a hard time opening it. She knew that it couldn't have been welded because even the slightest rise in temperature could have made the hazardous material explode. She had tried using an adhesive remover but that didn't work either. She decided to use an acid to simply burn through the box.

She grabbed a dropper and filled it with an acid that could burn through just about anything. It was twenty times stronger then battery acid. If it were to drip onto your hand, it would burn a hole through your hand in about two seconds. Without missing a beat though, Abby placed it in the dropper and placed it inside the Plexiglas box with the silver box. She grabbed the dropper with the rubber gloves and placed one drop onto the iron and it instantly burned through. Abby was shocked because she had expected it to take longer. It didn't matter at the time though so Abby grabbed the glass beaker that she had placed in the box earlier and poured the contents of the silver box into the beaker. There was less then a millimeter of the fluid. She took a sample and placed it in a vile. She placed the vile in her mass spectrometer. She turned it on and waited for it to do its thing.

"Why did it melt through it so fast?" McGee asked.

"I don't know. They only metal that could be burned through so fast is a soft metal like aluminum. But that can't hold back the radiation," Abby said. she thought hard for a moment then something click and everything started to make sense. She went to a shelf and grabbed a camera, except this camera wasn't like others. It was the smallest camera known to man, barely visible to the naked eye. She placed it on the glove then stuck her finger over the hole on the silver box in a way that allowed the camera to see inside the box.

"McGee, were there two wires attached to this box?" Abby asked.

"Yeah, but they didn't go inside and were just touching the box," McGee explained.

"Just as I had suspected. Where did the wires go to?" Abby asked. McGee raced back to his disassembled iPhone and followed the wires to their end destination.

"The camera. They were hooked up to the camera button," McGee said.

"Okay, okay, let me figure this out. You had pictures of everyone that's sick, no?" Abby said. McGee nodded his head in agreement, "then this is what must have happened. The hazardous material must have been inert somehow. Then whenever you pressed the camera button, it temporarily disturbed the material causing it to react. Then some of it left out a small nozzle attached to the lens of the camera. The charged particles must have traveled closely together and embedded into whatever you were taking pictures of, which in this case, was NCIS Special Agents."

"Oh my gosh," McGee said shakily, "I'm a killer."


End file.
